The stinky seaweed is both difficult and expensive to clean up.
Navy Minister Rafael Ojeda warned Friday that over 30,000 tonnes of sargassum were located off the coast of Quintana Roo.
Speaking at President López Obrador’s morning press conference – held Friday in the Quintana Roo municipality of Isla Mujeres – Ojeda said the navy was monitoring an estimated 32,000 tonnes of the seaweed.
“We’re going to try to stop it from reaching the beaches,” he said, referring to the navy’s efforts to collect the seaweed at sea. If it does wash up on shore, it will be removed, the navy chief said.
“This sargassum reaches the Mexican Caribbean and a lot of the time continues its trajectory towards the Gulf of Mexico,” Ojeda said.
“We can say that the current situation is alarming, it’s a category 8 [situation],” he said, explaining that meant an excessive amount of sargassum could arrive on Quintana Roo beaches.
Monday morning’s sargassum distribution map from the Quintana Roo Sargassum Monitoring Network. Facebook / Red de Monitoreo del Sargazo de Quintana Roo
The Quintana Roo sargassum monitoring network’s map shows that 34 beaches currently have excessive amounts of sargassum. Among those where excessive quantities of the smelly and unsightly seaweed have washed up are beaches in the Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum areas and beaches along the eastern coast of Cozumel.
Ojeda noted that the navy has removed 97 tonnes of sargassum from the sea since February 15 and cleared over 9,000 tonnes from beaches. He said that 328 marines, 11 sargassum-gathering vessels, 23 other boats and five air units are supporting the navy’s seaweed removal and collection efforts.
The navy chief said that sargassum affects the coastlines of a lot of countries but Mexico is the only one where federal, state and municipal authorities are working together to combat the problem.
“We would like the results to be better but in one way or another we are combating the problem,” Ojeda said.
The director of the Quintana Roo sargassum monitoring network disagrees, saying last month that Mexico’s anti-sargassum strategy doesn’t work.
“Over and over again the same deficiencies have been on display. For example, we’ve already seen that the barriers don’t work because the sargassum goes over [them]. They’re barriers designed for the contention of oil spills,” Esteban Amaro said.
Navy Minister Rafael Ojeda describes the navy’s work to prevent the arrival of sargassum, at Friday’s presidential press conference.
Removing sargassum from beaches is not only very hard work but also very expensive.
A study by the National Autonomous University’s reef systems unit in Puerto Morelos determined that removing sargassum from beaches costs authorities between 6 million and 10 million pesos (US $293,000 to $488,000) per kilometer per year.
Rosa Rodríguez, head of the unit, told the newspaper Milenio that the government should be encouraging the use of sargassum for industrial purposes.
“It’s worth investing [in sargassum] … research [and] management … and promoting the industry because sargassum has the potential to be used in different industries,” she said.
“But we need regulations … [and] fiscal incentives” to encourage its use, Rodríguez said.
President López Obrador and U.S. President Biden shake hands at a 2012 meeting, before either was elected to the presidency of their respective countries.
Cooperation on development in southern Mexico and Central America was a key focus of President López Obrador’s phone call with United States President Joe Biden on Friday.
López Obrador said he had a “cordial” conversation with his U.S. counterpart, adding in a social media post that they spoke about “issues of interest in the bilateral relationship.”
The president also said they agreed that Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard would travel to Washington, D.C., on Monday to work with U.S. officials on “issues of cooperation for development” and the Summit of the Americas – a meeting of the heads of state of Western Hemisphere countries that will be held in Los Angeles in June.
The approximately 50-minute call came four months after Mexico and the United States entered into a new security agreement that superseded the 13-year-old Mérida initiative and as the U.S. remains concerned about its neighbor’s energy sector policies and plans, albeit less so because López Obrador’s nationalistic electricity bill failed to pass Congress last month.
In a statement, the Mexican president’s office said López Obrador and Biden reviewed progress on bilateral development cooperation in Central American and southern Mexico. Their cooperation is aimed at attending the root causes of migration to the United States, such as poverty, lack of opportunity and insecurity.
Tuvimos una cordial conversación con el presidente Biden. Tratamos temas de interés en la relación bilateral y acordamos que el secretario Marcelo Ebrard visitará Washington el lunes para avanzar en temas de cooperación para el desarrollo y sobre la Cumbre de las Américas. pic.twitter.com/IIWeLii7S7
On Twitter, AMLO shared some of the topics covered in his “cordial” phone call with the U.S. leader.
Officials in Mexico and the United States are concerned that the cessation of Title 42 expulsions – a Donald Trump era public health order that allows the U.S. to expel migrants to stop the spread of the coronavirus – will lead to a surge in arrivals on the U.S. border. The order was to expire on May 23, but that is now in doubt due to a federal court ruling last week.
The president’s office said López Obrador and Biden “emphasized the importance of working together with other countries in the region to ensure safe and sustainable livelihoods for their respective citizens and migrant populations,” adding that they would continue to collaborate on job creation in Central America and efforts to expand legal migration pathways.
“They also committed to promoting these efforts with key regional partners and in multilateral forums … [with a view to making] a new and and solid declaration about migration and protection,” the statement said.
It also said that López Obrador and Biden spoke about progress in the strengthening of supply chains in North America and “the modernization of our shared border to further strengthen our agricultural and trade activity,” which was recently affected by Texas’s decision to ramp up inspections of trucks crossing the border from Mexico.
The president’s office also noted that López Obrador proposed that all Western Hemisphere countries be invited to the Summit of the Americas. Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are among U.S. antagonists in the region.
In a readout of the call between the two presidents, the White House said Biden spoke with López Obrador to “reaffirm the vision they laid out in the November 2021 North American Leaders’ Summit of a North America that remains the most competitive and dynamic region in the world.”
The politicians spoke about border infrastructure projects that aim to promote legal trade and stop the illegal flow of drugs and weapons, the president’s office said in a statement.
“At a time of immense global challenges, from Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine to economic volatility, the leaders pledged to work together across the breadth and depth of the relationship between our nations,” the White House said.
“President Biden and President López Obrador discussed how our countries can continue to advance our shared economic, climate, energy, and migration management goals in line with the High-Level Economic Dialogue, with a special focus on shoring up North American supply chains.”
The readout said that “in view of the unprecedented flows of migrants from throughout the hemisphere to our two countries, the presidents reiterated the need to build stronger tools for managing regional migration surges.”
“To that end, they agreed to enhance our collaboration to support just, humane and effective efforts to reduce irregular migration and to advance our shared goal that countries throughout the region improve their ability to manage their borders in furtherance of humanitarian and security objectives,” the White House said.
White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said Friday that the “majority of the conversation was about migration” and described the call as “very constructive.”
“This was not a call where President Biden was threatening the Mexican president in any way,” she said, seemingly making a veiled reference to former president Trump’s recent boast that Mexico “folded” and agreed to place troops on its northern border to stem illegal immigration to the U.S. when he threatened in 2019 to impose blanket tariffs on Mexican imports.
López Obrador has repeatedly said that the United States has treated Mexico with respect since he took office in late 2018.
Neither country said that López Obrador and Biden spoke about Mexico’s failure to impose sanctions on Russia in light of its invasion of Ukraine, but a high-ranking U.S. official said before the call that “we obviously hope that they will join us in imposing a cost on the Kremlin for what it is doing … by working with us to enforce sanctions implemented by the United States and our partners.”
The official, who spoke with journalists on condition of anonymity, said the United States and Mexico would inevitably have “different approaches” to responding to Russia’s aggression but added that they had a “common vision” that Vladimir Putin’s war was unjustified.
Yes, as long as you’re not eating it every day. Concerns about eating swordfish are rooted in its often high mercury content, a hazard with any fish that lives long, grows large and eats smaller fish (think tuna, shark, marlin).
Mercury accumulates over the lifetime of the fish, attaching to the protein in the flesh; cooking or cleaning won’t remove it. The United States Food and Drug Administration recommends young children, pregnant women and women of childbearing age not eat swordfish; the rest of us are OK eating it a couple of times a week.
The reality is you’d have to eat it every day for months on end in order to possibly be affected by the amount of mercury in the fish.
That’s good news because swordfish is plentiful — and affordable — on both coasts of Mexico.
Swordfish + Neapolitan pasta = YUM!
Their migratory pattern takes them to cooler waters during hot summer months and warmer waters during the winter. Fishing seasons vary depending on location, but frozen swordfish retains its texture and flavor better than most other fish due to its firm, dense makeup.
Although in the past, swordfish was listed as endangered, tightly regulated fishing and increased awareness changed that. This downloadable consumer guide allows you to check the status of just about every kind of seafood.
In Mexico, swordfish (pez espada) are found in the waters off Baja, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora and Guerrero. They are powerful, predatory fish and travel alone, not in schools. They can often be found at the surface of the water or breaching and are one of the world’s largest and fastest fish, able to swim up to 80 kilometers per hour.
Fresh swordfish is a dull white, with a reddish vein in the center of a whole filet. It’s often compared to chicken. It doesn’t have a fishy or oily taste and indeed can be almost sweet. I like to add cooked chunks to pasta primavera, and Swordfish Piccata (recipe below) has become my go-to when I have dinner guests.
Perhaps the easiest way to cook swordfish is to grill it; unlike most fish, the flesh is firm and meaty. Another simple method is to pan-fry it quickly in an equal mixture of olive oil and butter. For one to two steaks, a tablespoon of each should do, heated till hot and bubbling on medium-high in a cast-iron or nonstick skillet. Wash and pat dry the swordfish, sprinkle with salt and pepper and cook the steaks (¾ to 1-inch thick) for three to four minutes on each side, turning once.
Cooked either of these ways, swordfish also makes fabulous tacos.
Swordfish Piccata
1½ pounds swordfish, in ¾ -inch slabs
Salt and pepper
½ cup regular flour, sifted
2 Tbsp. olive oil
9 Tbsp. butter
1 Tbsp. finely minced shallot
⅙ cup dry white wine
2 Tbsp. capers
Juice of ½ lemon plus wedges for garnish
1 Tbsp. minced parsley, plus more for garnish
Season swordfish on both sides with salt and pepper. Dredge in flour, shaking off excess.
In cast-iron or nonstick skillet, heat oil until just smoking over medium-high heat. Add 2 Tbsp. butter until melted and bubbling, about 30 seconds. Place swordfish in pan and cook, turning once, until browned on both sides, 3–4 minutes each side. Transfer to a plate; remove any excess fat from pan.
While pan is still hot, melt 1 Tbsp. butter, add shallots/onions and cook 30 seconds. Deglaze pan with the wine; reduce by half. Add capers and lemon juice; cook 1 minute. Remove pan from heat, add remaining 6 Tbsp. of butter, 1 Tbsp. at a time, swirling pan continuously. Add parsley. Season to taste.
Spoon sauce over fish, garnish with lemons and parsley.
With a good, fresh fish, you won’t miss the meat in Swordfish au Poivre.
Swordfish au Poivre
4 swordfish steaks, about 1-inch thick, skin removed
Fine sea salt
1½ Tbsp. crushed black peppercorns
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 large shallot, minced
½ cup cognac or brandy
⅔ cup heavy cream
1 Tbsp. minced parsley
Heat oven to 150 F. Dust fish lightly with salt and pepper. Have a baking sheet or ovenproof pan big enough to hold fish in a single layer.
Heat oil to medium-hot in a heavy skillet. Sear fish until barely cooked through and still a bit pink in the center, about 3 minutes on each side. Transfer to baking sheet/ovenproof pan; place in oven and turn off the heat.
Add butter to skillet; add shallot and sauté, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add cognac. Swirl in the pan a minute or so until somewhat reduced and syrupy. Add cream and parsley; continue cooking, stirring, until somewhat thickened.
Remove from heat. Remove fish from oven; serve with sauce poured on top.
Neapolitan Pasta with Swordfish
2 Tbsp. olive oil
¾ lbs. swordfish steaks, skin removed, cut in ¾-inch cubes
Salt and pepper
1½ Tbsp. capers, rinsed and dried
1 Tbsp. thinly sliced garlic
¾ cup canned whole tomatoes, chopped
10 pitted Kalamata olives
½ lb. short pasta, like cavatelli or penne
Grated zest of ½ lemon
1 Tbsp. minced flat-leaf parsley
Heat 1 Tbsp. oil in large nonstick or cast-iron skillet on high; add swordfish pieces in a single layer. Sear about 30 seconds until starting to brown.
Season with salt and pepper; remove to a bowl. Reduce heat to medium. Add remaining oil and capers; cook until capers start to crisp and brown. Turn to low, stir in garlic; cook 1 minute. Add tomatoes and olives. Cook, stirring, for about 10 minutes; turn off heat.
Meanwhile, cook pasta al dente. Drain, reserving ½ cup of pasta water; add pasta to skillet.
Heat on medium-low, gently folding everything together. Add enough pasta water to make a sauce-like consistency.
There’ll be chef’s kisses all round for these easy kebabs.
Gently add swordfish and lemon zest. Transfer to serving dish, scatter parsley on top and serve.
Swordfish Kebabs with Chimichurri
2 pounds swordfish steaks (at least 1½ inches thick), skinned and cut into 1½ -inch chunks
12 bay leaves (fresh if possible)
2 lemons, halved lengthwise and cut crosswise into ¼ -inch slices, seeds removed, plus 1 whole lemon for squeezing
Salt and pepper
2 Tbsp. chopped fresh oregano
Extra-virgin olive oil
To make kebabs, thread swordfish chunks, bay leaves and lemon slices alternately onto bamboo or metal skewers. Arrange in nonreactive baking dish. Season kebabs on all sides with salt and pepper. Squeeze juice from remaining lemon over them. Sprinkle with oregano; drizzle with olive oil. Turn to coat; marinate in refrigerator 30 minutes.
Build a hot fire in your grill. Oil grate; arrange kebabs over fire. Grill until fish is browned, sizzling and cooked through, 2–3 minutes per side. Baste kebabs with a little chimichurri as they cook. Serve with more chimichurri on the side.
In 2018, Gonzalez and supporters protested the slow government response to his case.
A man who was left quadriplegic after being attacked by a neighbor in Quintana Roo now faces US $95,000 worth of surgery costs.
Roberto González was assaulted in January 2017, at his home in Playa del Carmen after a quarrel with a neighbor.
González and his son had been preparing for a trip to a hot air balloon show in Yucatán when a neighbor’s unruly dog entered their property, González said in an interview with the newspaper Milenio.
“We had an exchange of words. She [Fernanda Salcedo] went for her husband [Rodrigo Galán] and I don’t know what she told him. Her husband came to me … he stunned me with a taser and I went down … When I tried to get up he started beating me and kicking me until he left me quadriplegic,” he said from a wheelchair in an apartment in Mexico City, where he has moved temporarily for access to medical care.
Once a keen sportsman, the attack led to a downward spiral for González.
“My health is very delicate. My body does not work as it did before. I used to be a very involved in sports, I did triathlons, I did open water marathons, I liked to run. I ran almost daily and now I can’t do any of that … My family life was totally destroyed. I had to get a divorce … there isn’t enough money. We had to sell cars, we had to sell everything you can imagine. We almost had to sell our clothes to be able to cope with it,” he said.
An operation previously unavailable in Mexico is now being offered in Guadalajara, Jalisco, and González has requested help on social media to raise US $95,000, hoping to regain some mobility or even walk again.
“It’s not something 100% certain. They don’t guarantee that you’ll be able to move or walk again, but I’m willing to try everything in my power. I dream, I long to walk again. To hug someone again, to be like I was before, or at lease some part of who I was,” he said.
González’s search for justice has been no easier. He launched two legal cases but they have advanced at a sluggish pace and been delayed by 18 amparos — legal injunctions to protect individuals’ constitutional rights — placed by Galán.
“The civil and criminal systems are too slow and they move you from one date to another. Then there is the pandemic and it seems like everyone is on vacation … unfortunately the system is excessively slow. I’m asking the authorities, the justice system, to speed it up … five years, and nothing has been achieved,” he said.
International tourist numbers surged in the first quarter, bringing relief to a sector that was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and associated restrictions.
More than 5 million international tourists flew into Mexico during the first three months of 2022, an increase of 138.5% compared to the same period of last year.
Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco reported Sunday that 5.02 million international tourists arrived by air between January and March, a figure just 7% below the number of arrivals in the first quarter of 2019.
Over three-quarters of the visitors – 3.88 million or 77% of the total – were from just three countries: the United States, Canada and Colombia.
Torruco said in a statement that 3.18 million Americans flew into the country in the first three months of the year, an increase of 101.2% compared to the same period of 2021.
Coastal resort destinations like San José del Cabo were popular among U.S. tourists.
The number of U.S. tourists, who commonly visit coastal destinations such as Cancún and Los Cabos, was 14.1% higher than in the first, pre-pandemic, quarter of 2019.
Over half a million Canadians – almost 511,000 – flew into Mexico in the first three months of the year, a whopping 1,446% increase over the first quarter of 2021.
Tourism from Canada collapsed early last year after that country’s government reached an agreement with the main Canadian airlines in late January 2021 to temporarily suspend flights to Mexico and Caribbean countries due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Despite the supercharged first quarter recovery, there is still a lot of ground to make up to reach pre-pandemic numbers for Canadian tourists. Over 1 million flew into Mexico in the first quarter of 2019, or more than double the number who came here in the first three months of 2022.
Colombians were a distant third in terms of the number of international tourists who touched down at the country’s airports between January and March. Just over 185,000 arrived, Torruco said, an increase of 217% compared to the first quarter of 2021.
The figure was 52% higher than in the first three months of 2019, when just under 122,000 Colombians arrived.
Torruco also reported that 3.82 million of the 5.02 million first quarter international tourists entered the country via the Cancún, Mexico City and Los Cabos airports.
The combined number of international arrivals at those three airports represented 76% of the total and was up 134% compared to the first quarter of 2021. However, the figure was 5% below the number for the first quarter of 2019, when just over 4 million foreigners flew into the capital and the country’s two leading resort cities.
Tourism accounted for over 8% of Mexico’s GDP in pre-pandemic times before falling in 2020 due to the slump in international travel. The sector employs more than 4 million Mexicans and is vital to the economy in states such as Quintana Roo and Baja California Sur.
Seeing more Mexican fathers than ever happily taking on childrearing tasks gives the writer hope. deposit photos
There’s a man who attends the March 8 women’s march every year.
He did not march this year, “out of respect for the separatists,” he said, but still, he showed up to show his support dressed in a plastic tunic with his daughter’s face on it and the message, “Don’t forget me, I’m still missing.”
His daughter Esmeralda disappeared in 2009, but he refuses to stay quiet about it. What parent would?
Another striking image of a father that’s recently gone viral is a man in Paraguay, standing alone at night on the side of the road. The photo was taken by his daughter, who says he walks to the bus stop to wait for her every night until she gets home from work.
In the weeks since writing my article on motherhood in Mexico, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about fathers here as well.
I think about my daughter’s father, who has embraced the job of raising her with gusto. We’re not together anymore, but he clearly takes his job as father seriously, guiding her, teaching her, caring for her and protecting her, a far cry from the stereotypical “weekend dad” who only shows up for the fun stuff.
While we might not see eye-to-eye on everything, I do not worry about her when she’s with him because I know that she is safe and happy.
I think about my current partner. He’s not a father himself but has enough caretaking instincts and playful disposition for the both of us, which my daughter benefits from greatly. He often cares for his two-year-old niece for full days at a time. He plays, changes diapers and never, ever loses patience, which is more than I can say for myself.
A couple of weeks ago, when his brother (our niece’s father) came to pick her up, I marveled at the way they cared for her between the two of them. I’ve seen plenty of women during my time in Mexico swoop in to take over childcare responsibilities from men. I do not have the inclination nor the instinct to do so myself and simply sat back to enjoy my after-meal coffee while they busied themselves attending to her needs.
Could things be changing, I thought? Is the definition of fatherhood finally expanding to mean equal involvement of fathers when it comes to the maddening, boring, tedious parts of raising a child?
Among the men around me, it seems to be.
Then again, who’s to say? I can only speak of how things go on in my own house, I suppose. I can only guess at who does the bulk of the domestic and childrearing work in individual homes. Among most of my friends, it’s definitely the women.
Still, though. Seeing more fathers than ever changing diapers and carrying around sparkly school bags gives me hope.
Every woman is somebody’s daughter. Most fathers love their daughters, right? Certainly, the fathers that I know are doting and caring, though to be fair, “the people I know” are not a representative sample of the country.
My biggest questions about the missing women and girls, then, have to do with the identity of the perpetrators of these disappearances, which almost always end in murder.
Do they have daughters? Sisters? Mothers? Do they care about any women, even just specific women, perhaps? Or do they think that women simply shouldn’t exist unless they’re personally useful to them? Do they lack respect for all life or just female life?
Are the perpetrators of these crimes a handful of bad people who commit them over and over again with impunity? Or — much more terrifying — is it a common, widespread crime committed by men who see an opportunity to do something they want with very little chance of getting caught?
I am extremely sad to say this, but the more disappearances there are, the harder it becomes to argue that a handful of psychopaths — and not some dark, misogynist corner of the culture — is to blame for the endurance of this type of crime.
We don’t know if these criminals have daughters they love, because we don’t know who they are. Whoever they are, they’ve so far been great at hiding among us. My terrified guess is that it’s a substantial number.
The most viral image of all lately has been of 18-year-old Debanhi Escobar standing on the side of the road in her skirt and hi-tops. It is believed that after having been sexually assaulted by the taxi driver who was driving her, she insisted on getting out of the taxi. The last photograph of her is the haunting image on the side of the road captured by the taxi driver to “prove she’d gotten out of the car.”
After asking for help at a transport company across the road — whose security tapes from that night have mysteriously disappeared — she disappeared. Her body was found several days later in the subterranean water tank of a nearby motel. Ms. Escobar’s father has accused the Attorney General’s Office of negligence and failing to take his daughter’s disappearance seriously.
When it comes to taking the disappearance of women and girls seriously, I think that at this point we could very well accuse the entire government of ignoring the problem.
During the week that Debanhi was being searched for, after all, there were 80 more disappearances of women and girls in the country, more than half of them between the ages of 10 and 18, a fact that positively turns my stomach.
This was a steep increase from the previous week. What’s not increasing at all is the budget allocated for fighting violence against women.
Someone recently suggested to me that perhaps the media attention femicides receive inadvertently encourages similar crimes, as it’s possible that those with the inkling feel emboldened to go for it, assured that they won’t get caught.
If reporting on these tragedies is truly contributing to more, then we’re in even more serious trouble than I thought.
In this cultural battle for the soul of Mexican men, I just hope the good dads win.
Pox started as a fermented ceremonial drink used by the Tzotzil Maya. More recently, it's become an increasingly popular distilled beverage in the state.
I must admit, my first experience with the word for Mexico’s distilled spirits — tequila, mezcal and the like — was with the rotgut available in those plastic beehive-looking jugs back when I lived on the Arizona border.
Since then, however, I’ve gotten an education.
Distillation was unknown in Mesoamerica. The Spanish brought brandy — distilled wine — with them, but to protect winemaking in the mother country, Spain forbade the making of alcoholic beverages in Mexico to anyone except the clergy.
Of course, people always find ways around such a prohibition. Unable to grow grapes in quantity, residents of New Spain found other sources of fermentable sugars.
Pulque, fermented agave sap, was known to the indigenous in Mexico for centuries prior to the conquest, but the beverage does not keep. And Mexico’s original peoples did also have a technique of harvesting and cooking the “hearts” of various agave plants to take advantage of the stored sugars within. These hearts are the source of mezcal and tequila — the latter just being a variety of mezcal from Tequila, Jalisco.
This print by José Guadalupe Posada, The Pulque-Maker Skeletons, held by the National Museum of Art, is evidence of the maguey plant beverage’s history.
Mexico has over 150 species of agave. At least 22 are suitable for making alcohol. The sweet liquid from cooked agave hearts had the advantage of being distillable and storable, as well as something relatively easy to hide from authorities. Different agave species produce different flavors, from something neutral to those that will knock your socks off.
Oaxaca is best known for mezcal, but its production can be found in many of Mexico’s states from Chiapas and Yucatan to the northern border. Most of these are called mezcal, but some go by other names, which can make them seem to be completely different liquors.
Aside from tequila, there is bacanora, a mezcal produced in and around Bacanora, Sonora. Its production and consumption were banned for decades as late as the 20th century, leading to a local history not unlike that of moonshine in the United States.
It is legal again and making a comeback: producers are experimenting with versions containing almond, pecan and pine nut flavors.
Other mezcals named after their place of origin include chichihualco from Guerrero and tuxca from Jalisco and Colima.
Several are named after the variety of agave. Sotol, from Chihuahua, is named after the sotol agave. Henniquen (sometimes called sisal), a liquor of the Yucatán Peninsula, is made from the same agave that produces rope. Lechuguilla and bingarrote are also derived from the name of their respective agave plants.
Bacanora is a mezcal with origins in Sonora, where it is seen as part of the identity of the state. Jicara Foodie Traveller
And then there’s rum: the Mexicans don’t think of themselves as rum drinkers, but sugar cane alcohol has played an important role in many Mexicans’ drinking habits.
The reason is that sugar cane alcohol is not called rum here, not even in Caribbean-bordering Veracruz and Yucatán. The wide variety of local names for it comes from references to different preparations and locations where it is made.
Therefore, to both relate the different preparations and distinguish them from the rum popular in other parts of the New World, I will call Mexican sugar cane-based alcohol caña, the Spanish word for cane.
Distilled caña got its start in areas where the Spanish introduced sugar cane cultivation, but its popularity went beyond those hot, humid areas. This is because sugar cane juice can be dried, transported and then easily rehydrated for fermentation.
Straight up caña is most likely found in sugar cane growing areas such as Morelos and parts of Michoacán. In fact, it was the Aguardiente de Caña from Zacualpan, Morelos, that made me rethink my definition of aguardiente. It is a good rum.
Although mezcal can be and is mixed with other flavorings, it is most often drunk in shots, with maybe a citrus and/or salt and/or worm chaser. On the other hand, caña is almost always drunk in preparations with other flavorings that are added either during and/or after the fermentation and distillation process. The wide variety of names of these beverages refer to these different preparations, with no reference to the caña base.
Homemade peanut-flavored toritos, a popular sugar-cane drink in Veracruz. NachtBel/Creative Commons
There’s one example you may very well know: Kahlua, a coffee and cream liqueur created in the state of Veracruz. It is very much like toritos, mixtures of caña and dairy with other flavors popular in the same state.
If you live in Mexico, you have also likely seen rompope, an egg-based sugar cane liqueur found in supermarkets and popular at Christmas. They have long been made in monasteries and convents.
In many areas of the country, caña has traditionally been steeped with local fruits, nuts and/or herbs to produce liqueurs that are consumed as digestifs and as medicine. They go by a myriad of names: acachul and yolixpa in Puebla, verde and morita in Xico, Veracruz, and mistela in Chiapas, Oaxaca, Yucatán and Campeche, just to name a few.
Most are produced at home or by small businesses and sold in markets and roadside stands, but some have gone commercial at least regionally.
One is mosquito, an orange-flavored sweet liqueur from the city of Toluca, and damiana, named after the plant that gives the liqueur its flavor (Turnera diffusa) from Baja California. The latter has become almost synonymous with the Damiana Guaycura brand because of its distinctive bottle.
The best-known caña that is drunk straight is charanda, from Michoacán. Named after a town in that state, it can be fermented and distilled either from pure sugar or with grapes or other fruit added, which will change the flavor. It used to be a very cheap alcohol, but prices for the better brands now match those of other spirits.
Sotol, a mezcal variation native to Chihuahua, is one of the more well-known regional beverages in Mexico.
Charanda can go by other names in Michoacán depending on where it is made, but the name now is regulated by the federal government the way tequila is.
Oddly, corn never became a widely-used base for creating alcohol in Mexico. According to food and spirit expert Nils Bernstein, the reason is that it is much easier to extract fermentable sugars from agave and cane than from corn, especially the very starchy varieties favored in Mexico.
Brandy is known here, often drunk mixed with Coca-Cola, but almost all of it is the Presidente brand produced by the Domecq company. Mexico has also begun producing various other spirits like gin and vodka, even sake, but none of these are considered traditional.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
The president was in a good mood on Friday as he gave his morning press conference from Isla Mujeres, Quintana Roo. Presidencia de la República
President López Obrador was in Veracruz and San Luis Potosí last weekend checking up on new highways. He was back to Mexico City on Sunday to celebrate his son’s 15th birthday.
Monday
A journalist kicked off the questions with the words of a former U.S. president. Speaking at a rally, Donald Trump had said that AMLO’s government folded on migration negotiations, before adding that despite him being a socialist, he liked the tabasqueño.
“I like President Trump, even though he’s a capitalist,” the president responded.
“The truth is that we understood each other and it was good for both nations … We will not allow any party … in the United States, or any candidate, to use Mexico as a piñata,” he insisted.
On claims that his predecessor had ordered the then CEO of Pemex to pay a bribe to a political opponent, the president said he was the wrong man to ask. Later in the conference he celebrated Emmanuel Macron’s election victory in France and said voters there had chosen liberty, equality and fraternity.
However, the president was more concerned with voters at home, and their pocketbooks. He said a new plan for controlling inflation was forthcoming. Inflation hit 7.72% in the first half of April, far above the Bank of México’s 3% target.
Tuesday
“Fortunately conditions are better, now that the pandemic is almost completely over,” the president declared, adding that the Tuesday health updates would now focus more on the government’s health reforms.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell presented a table of the 30 worst countries for COVID-19 deaths: Mexico was 28th.
There was an update on educational reforms, which provided a platform for a short rant by the suitably named Marx Arriaga, the Education Ministry’s director of educational materials.
Marx Arriaga, director of educational materials at the Education Ministry, discussed educational reforms at Tuesday’s conference. Presidencia de la República
“I could point out hundreds of social problems that this meritocratic behaviorist, punitive, patriarchal, racist, competitive, Eurocentric, colonial, inhuman and classist neoliberal [educational] model has generated,” he said.
On billionaire Elon Musk’s likely acquisition of Twitter, the president said he thought it could help liberate the platform. “Hopefully they clean it of the corruption that is there, of manipulation with bots … [hopefully] there will be no censorship so that we can have alternative means of information, and all have the possibility to communicate,” he said.
The president confirmed he would chat with U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday by telephone, but admitted he still didn’t know what they would discuss.
Wednesday
Government media expert Elizabeth García Vilchis presented her regular “who’s who in the lies of the week” section. She said it was a lie that the recently opened Felipe Ángeles airport was empty, and that in fact six flights were departing a day. For the sake of comparison, Mexico City’s main airport — the busiest in Latin America — handled more than 500 departures on Wednesday.
García repeated the claim that the Maya Train project doesn’t damage the environment and added, “There are ecocides that pseudo-environmentalists don’t want to see. They just want to protest against the Maya Train.”
The president said the government’s plan to keep prices in check would cap the cost of 25 basic products “so that the most humble people do not suffer and they are guaranteed the basics at a fair price.” He added that most producers, distributors and stores were on board with the plan.
On environmental matters, the president revealed a chart of international carbon emissions. Mexico was in 42nd place, a mere speck compared to China, which the chart showed emitted three times more carbon than the second worst country, India.
Thursday
Deputy Security Minister Ricardo Mejía Berdeja presented the “Zero Impunity” section on crime. He detailed some of the suspects that had been arrested, including: El Gusano (The Worm), El Chopa (The Black Seabream) and El Grillo (The Cricket), and the Colombian cartel leader El Boliqueso (The Cheeseball), who’d been deported.
Interior Minister Adán Augusto López revealed the details of the electoral reform, which was set for Congress. The constitutional bill would dissolve the National Electoral Institute (INE) replacing it with a directly elected body, cut public funding to political parties, loosen electoral campaigning rules, cut the number of federal and local lawmakers and introduce electronic voting.
“There is no intention to impose a single party. What we want is for there to be an authentic, true democracy in the country and to end electoral fraud,” the president said of the bill.
On Thursday, Interior Minister Adán Augusto López spoke about the proposed electoral reform. Presidencia de la República
“It’s not possible that in this world, in these times of technological development, we cannot … create a simple, agile, free, secure, secret mechanism,” he added, on a system for electronic voting.
López Obrador extended the conference to bring out deputies from his Morena party, thanking them for the recent nationalization of lithium and encouraging their support for the electoral bill, which could threaten some of their livelihoods. “Long live the transformation of Mexico. Long live the deputies. Long live Mexico!” he exclaimed.
Friday
The conference was broadcast from Isla Mujeres, Quintana Roo, where Governor Carlos Joaquín said tourism in the state had come roaring back since the COVID-19 pandemic abated, but complained about troublesome sargassum — a seaweed that emits a foul odor when it decomposes — arriving on the beaches.
The Navy Minister confirmed that marines had collected 97 tonnes of sargassum, saving tourists the eyesore and the unwelcome stench.
Later in the conference, López Obrador insisted that he hadn’t revealed his successor in Thursday’s meeting, after Morena deputies chanted, “President! President!” at the Interior Minister.
He repeated the guarantee that the party’s next candidate for the presidency would be decided by a public survey.
“It’s not only … [Interior Minister] Adán, … [Mexico City Mayor] Claudia Sheinbaum is one of the best, well-rounded and honest. I could say the same about [Foreign Minister] Marcelo Ebrard,” the president said, before mocking the opposition’s lack of obvious candidates.
To round off another week of conferences, Joaquín and AMLO headed off for an emotionally conflicted sandwich: “Cheerful shrimp. I think that’s what it’s called,” the governor said.
The presence of crocodiles in the Lake Chapala area is believed due to them escaping a home in Michoacán and reaching Jalisco via the Lerma River.
In case anyone might have a doubt, Mexico does have crocodiles.
There are three species, in fact, but the most common is Crocodylus acutus, the American crocodile, which frequently lives in estuaries and can grow to a length of over five meters.
Biologist Paulino Ponce is an independent researcher specializing in crocodiles and human-croc conflicts. A graduate of the University of Guadalajara, he currently heads up a task force dedicated to the tricky business of finding and relocating misplaced crocodiles in Mexico’s biggest inland body of water, Lake Chapala.
“How did you get interested in crocodiles?” I asked Ponce.
“Bueno, I’ve always been fascinated by reptiles,” he replied. “When I was five years old, my father took us to a turtle sanctuary, and from then on, I was hooked! I loved reptiles of all kinds, but — you may not believe it — when I grew up, I started out studying music at Guadalajara’s Instituto Cabañas. Yes, I love music, sports and reptiles!”
Ponce also teaches about crocodiles. Here he shows how to open a crocodile’s mouth at Villa Fantasia park in Zapopan, Jalisco.Paulino Ponce
Eventually, it seems the reptiles won out, and Ponce ended up at the Herpetarium of the Guadalajara Zoo.
“Here I worked with some of the most poisonous snakes in the world,” he said. “I really enjoyed this, but eventually it came time to do my thesis, and I wanted to write something really useful that would benefit whatever species I was studying — and also benefit the environment. So I picked Crocodylus acutus, which at that time was red-listed as being endangered.”
This led Ponce to the Los Tuxtlas Tropical Biological Station in Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz.
“Here,” he said, “I took a crocodilian training course with herpetologist Dr. [Gustavo] Casas Andreu of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. At night, people would say, ‘Come on, Paulino, let’s go have a beer!’ but I was so fascinated by what I was learning that all I wanted to do was read more about crocodiles!
“Then we went out to do fieldwork at a farm in Laguna Catemaco, also in Veracruz, and one of the course professors was Gonzalo Pérez-Higareda, a real expert in crocodiles. So there he was, demonstrating the problems and techniques for capturing a croc, and when he finished, he held up a rope and he says, ‘Okay, who wants to go out and catch one right now?’
“Well, I jumped right up and grabbed the rope and said, ‘Me! Me!’ And then there was this total silence in the room. Nobody else said a thing. It was a course all about crocodiles, but nobody else volunteered!”
A croc found in Jalisco’s Primavera Forest, packaged and ready to be received at an animal refuge center. Karina Aguilar
I asked Ponce about the problem of crocodile attacks in Mexico.
“In 1993, the Mexican government organized a meeting about crocodile attacks that were taking place in Puerto Vallarta, where a child had supposedly died,” Ponce explained.
“After that,” he said, “there were meetings and meetings and meetings about crocodile problems, and over and over I would get up and say, ‘What in the world are we doing? While we’re sitting around here, a crocodile could be eating someone! Let’s go take care of the problem!'”
From that time on, Ponce began to take a personal hand in dealing with Jalisco’s crocodile situation.
One example took place in 1996, when a crocodile three meters long attacked a six-year-old girl in Puerto Vallarta. In this case, two crocs were captured and released elsewhere. In another case, a 4.68-meter croc killed a five-year-old boy in the estuary of the Tomatlán River in Jalisco. The culprit was captured and sent to an enclosure. And then there is the story of the crocodile discovered in 2009 in Bosque la Primavera, the huge forest located just west of Guadalajara. Crocs, of course, are not endemic to this forest, but there it was, swimming around in a pond known as El Carrizo.
The Lake Chapala Crocodile Patrol prepares to tour the lake. Paulino Ponce
On April 28, 2009, Ponce led a team of volunteer crocodile wranglers there for nighttime crocodile hunting.
At first, they simply watched the crocodile, observing its movements and favorite haunts. The reptile appeared nearly two meters long and had probably been feeding on turtles and tilapia for some time.
United States Peace Corps volunteer Marc Trinks was a member of the team, and he describes the first night they floated into the middle of the pond to confront the crocodile:
“We had a long pole with a noose at the end. Paulino was in the front of the boat, and I was in the back, navigating. We tried to approach the croc fast, kill the motor and coast up to him so Paulino could get him around the neck with the noose. We tried that three times that night until he got scared and wouldn’t let us get close to him anymore.
“And then, the second night, we tried the same thing a few times, and the croc went back in the creek where the pond starts. We corralled him there. We used nets to try to catch him. He got tangled up in one of them, but when we moved in close to grab him, he swam under the nets and escaped. So that was night two lost.”
The crocodile hunters, however, were not discouraged. The following morning, they were back in the pond, laying out snare traps baited with pieces of fresh fish.
Ponce’s team with a Morelet’s crocodile captured at Lake Chapala and returned to its native habitat on the Pacific Coast. Karina Aguilar
Crocodiles trip these snares when they eat the bait and pull on it, causing the snare to close around the animal’s neck or body.
“On day three, at 2:40 in the afternoon,” Trinks said, “the croc fell into the trap and we got him.”
The crocodile turned out to be 1.74 meters long and “in good shape but a bit thin, possibly due to a scarcity of food in the area,” Trinks said.
Team member Karina Aguilar lamented the fact that the croc had apparently been placed there deliberately by “someone ignorant of how much damage such an action could cause not only to the animal but also to the equilibrium of the local ecosystem.”
Ponce took a sample of the crocodile’s DNA for his biogenetic database, and the Primavera croc was eventually returned to its natural habitat on the Pacific coast.
In Lake Chapala, much like in Bosque la Primavera, it was believed that there were no crocs, but that turned out not to be true.
Teaching about poisonous snakes in Campeche: Ponce safely incapacitates a deadly Nauyaca viper using a hollow tube.
“For years, I kept hearing rumors that people had seen crocodiles in the lake,” Ponce told me. Then, in 2011, they invited animal rescuer Andrés González and me to the town of Tizapán on the south shore of Lake Chapala to get a crocodile that local police had captured.
“To my surprise, I saw that it was a Crocodylus moreletii [Morelet’s crocodile] — a native of the Gulf of Mexico, mind you! To make matters worse, the Tizapán police said there was another one in an arroyo [stream] that they had been unable to capture.”
Why, I asked Ponce, are there crocodiles in Lake Chapala?
“Unfortunately,” he replied, “it was human beings who brought them here. After a lot of digging, I learned that years ago, a number of crocs escaped from a house in Michoacán, all of whom headed straight for the Lerma River [which connects Michoacán and Jalisco and eventually empties into Lake Chapala]. And this, it seems, is how the crocodiles made their way to Lake Chapala.”
Since the 1990s right up to the present, said the biologist, there have been many records of croc sightings around Lake Chapala, enough to merit ongoing patrolling.
Ponce has organized a team to do just this, “but,” he said, “we need to keep replacing our equipment, which wears out or gets damaged. For example, we need snares, lights, gasoline, nets, rope, camera traps, a GoPro [a small portable camera]. Our boat is for estuaries, but now we need a bigger one for moving around on the lake.”
Ponce introduces a Morelet’s crocodile to a TV audience.
Funding is the team’s biggest problem, and Ponce is looking for support from lakeside organizations.
“We need to monitor the whole lake,” he said. “Crocs keep turning up everywhere. We have registers from sites all around the lake, from Ajijic, Jocotepec, San Pedro, Jamay … and some of them measure more than three meters!” Lake Chapala is about 80 kilometers long and 20 kilometers wide.
“There are all kinds of places where aquatic plants abound and crocodiles can hide,” Ponce said. “Although there are few chances to be caught by a croc, I recommend caution. People should especially be watchful of their children and their pets. All of them are ‘bite size’ as far as crocodiles are concerned. We know that a crocodile can surprise and catch a fast animal like a cheetah, so one must be alert along the lakeshore. Sometimes a crocodile does grab an adult, a drunk, for example.”
“Once upon a time, more than 70% of the people bitten by crocs in Mexico were fishermen,” he said. “But these days, tourists are gaining on [them], not only at the lake but also in Cancún, Vallarta and Manzanillo.”
To report a croc sighting on Lake Chapala (in English or Spanish), call Paulino Ponce at his WhatsApp phone number: 331-574-9417. You can also send a message to poncecp@hotmail.com. Note the location and time of your sighting and the approximate size of the crocodile, and take photos or videos if possible.
And, if you have the financial means, consider lending the team a hand.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, since 1985. His most recent book is Outdoors in Western Mexico, Volume Three. More of his writing can be found on his blog.
Like some other private energy companies, Iberdrola has struggled to get necessary permits approved.
Spanish energy company Iberdrola’s investment in Mexico fell to just US $16.1 million in the first quarter of 2022, a 93% decline compared to five years ago and a 60% drop in the space of a year.
The company – which President López Obrador holds up as an example of what he calls unscrupulous foreign firms that have “looted” the country – has cut its investment in the first quarter of every year since the president, a staunch energy nationalist, took office.
Iberdrola, which entered the Mexican market over 20 years ago and has numerous combined cycle power plants here as well as wind and solar farms, invested $222.3 million in Mexico in the first quarter of 2017.
Investment declined 4% to $212.6 million in the first quarter of 2018 before plummeting 62% in the space of a year to just $79.9 million in the first three months of 2019. López Obrador, who has made strengthening state-owned energy companies a central aim of his administration, was sworn in as president on December 1, 2018.
Iberdrola’s investment continued to decline in the first quarters of 2020 and 2021, dropping from $40.7 million in the first three months of last year to just above $16 million last quarter. The figure represents just 0.7% of the company’s global investment in the first quarter of 2022, which totaled $2.35 billion.
Five years ago, in the first quarter of 2017, Iberdrola allocated 20.4% of its global investment to energy projects in Mexico. The president at the time was Enrique Peña Nieto, whose energy reform opened up the sector to foreign and private companies.
In late 2020, Iberdrola threatened to stop investing in Mexico altogether due to a lack of clarity about how the government would treat foreign companies. CEO Ignacio Galán said during a presentation of Iberdrola’s latest financial results that the company didn’t expect to invest heavily in Mexico in the near future.
López Obrador’s proposed electricity reform, which would have guaranteed the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission over half the power market, failed to pass the lower house of Congress earlier this month, allowing foreign and private companies to breathe a sigh of relief, but the federal government has other ways it can make life difficult for non-state actors in the energy sector.
One tactic it has used to hinder private companies is to reject or delay the permits they need to operate without encumbrance in Mexico’s energy sector.
Since March 2021, the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) has rejected at least 10 requests made by Iberdrola to modify or renew permits, the newspaper Reforma reported.
Beatriz Marcelino Estrada, president of the Association of Energy Distributors and Dealers, said last month that more than 600 energy sector permit applications submitted to the CRE, the Energy Ministry and the Agency for Safety, Energy and the Environment were stalled. She said the delays were affecting investments worth approximately 18 billion pesos (US $882 million).
Iberdrola’s power plant in the Nuevo León municipality of Pesquería is one of the affected projects. The plant has been unable to operate for almost three months because the CRE refused to modify one of its permits.
Iberdrola, which has a presence in 15 states, is one of the largest private energy companies in the Mexican market. According to the Iberdrola México website, the company generated 16% of the country’s electricity in 2019.
If the government has its way, that figure won’t be going any higher.
